10 Best Residential Proxies of 2023
Residential proxies can breathe new life into your bot or web scraping software. That’s because they come from real devices, letting you blend into the crowd much better than datacenter IPs. With a residential proxy server, Mr Robot 123 becomes John from Cincinnati, Maria from Lyon, or Rajesh from Delhi.
If you’re looking to buy the best residential proxies, you’ve come to the right place. This page will introduce you to a variety of great providers. Don’t worry, we’ve extensively tested each and outlined their main characteristics to make your choice easier. Without further ado, here are the best residential proxies for sale in 2023.
Key Points about Rotating Residential Proxies
- Residential proxies borrow IPs from real people: their computers, mobile phones, and other devices on WiFi. They’re often called peer-to-peer proxies.
- This makes them much harder to detect than datacenter IPs.
- They also support more locations and more precise targeting options.
- Residential proxy networks include millions of IPs. However, only some of them are available at a time because people can simply turn off their devices.
- Residential IPs are shared and have to rotate after a while. For dedicated addresses, you can look into ISP proxies.
- You usually buy traffic to access the whole proxy network.
To learn more, you can read our guide on residential proxies.
Why Use Residential Proxies vs Other Proxy Types
When does it make sense to use residential proxies instead of, say, datacenter IPs? There are three good reasons:
1. Your target has strong protection mechanisms. Sneaker websites, travel fare aggregators, and other sites that encounter bot traffic use IP reputation as the first line of defence. Residential IPs have a good reputation because they’re registered under consumer internet service providers.
2. You need broad location coverage. Residential IPs come from millions of people around the world. So, they support many locations – much more than a data center could. This makes them a good choice for SEO crawling, ad verification, software localization, and similar tasks.
3. You want to browse truly anonymously. VPNs and datacenter addresses hide you but not the fact you’re using them. Residential proxies make it look like you’re browsing as a real person.
You can read our comparison of datacenter and residential proxies to learn more.
How Much Do Best Residential Proxies Cost?
You’ll be looking at paying anywhere between $1 to $15 per gigabyte. A lot depends on how much you buy and if you commit to a long-term contract. The average for 100 GBs is around $7/GB.
A word about free trials: if you’re not a business, you probably won’t get one. Most providers will offer you a limited money-back guarantee instead. This is the market standard. Its purpose is to protect from abuse.
**PacketStream’s system overcounts traffic use by 8 to 10 times, so the actual price is much higher.
| 5GB | 20GB | 50GB | 100GB | 250GB | 500GB | 1TB | |
| Smartproxy | $8.50 | $6 | $5.60 | $5.20 | $4.80 | $4.40 | $4 |
| Oxylabs | $15 | $15 | $12 | $8 | $7 | $6 | $4 |
| Bright Data* | $10.50 | $10.50 | $8.92 | $8.92 | $7.87 | $7.35 | Custom |
| SOAX | – | $6.60 | $6.17 | $5.68 | $4 | $3.2 | $3 |
| Infatica | – | $12 | $9 | $7 | $7 | $6 | $350 |
| Rayobyte | $15 | $12.50 | $7 | $6 | $5 | $4 | $3 |
| IPRoyal | $5.95 | $5.25 | $4.90 | $4.55 | $4.20 | $3.50 | $3.15 |
| NetNut | $20 | $15 | $12 | $8 | $6.50 | $5 | $4 |
| Webshare | $15 | $15 | $9.60 | $8.40 | $7.20 | $6 | $4.80 |
| PacketStream** | – | – | $1 | $1 | $1 | $1 | $1 |
How We Made This List
To choose the best residential proxies, we tested major proxy providers. All the companies on the list participated in our annual Proxy Market Research. There, we made over 2 million connection requests for each provider over a period of three weeks. We then evaluated the companies by their pool size, performance, features, and price.
The Best Residential Proxies for 2023
Smartproxy offers great value for anyone that needs backconnect residential proxies. It controls a 40 million proxy pool and has wide location coverage – you can target any city or state from 195 countries worldwide. The provider strikes a rare balance of top-notch performance, affordable pricing, and enough features for most tasks. The user experience is also impeccable. There are many guides, proxy control tools, and award-winning customer support. You can start using Smartproxy with minimal interaction, as it emphasizes self-service.
Smartproxy’s only real drawback is limited targeting options (no carrier or ASN targeting).
Features:
- Proxy pool: 40 million
- Protocols: HTTP(S), SOCKS5
- Locations: 195 with country, state, and city targeting
- Rotation: every request, 10, 30 minutes
- Support: award-winning 24/7 support via chat or email
- Extras: API, browser extension, anti-detect browser, extensive documentation
Performance:
- Factual pool size: very large
- Success rate: 99.43%
- Response time: 0.57 s
Pricing:
Starts from $8.5 for 1 GB. 3-day refund available.
Read the Smartproxy review for more information and performance tests.
Oxylabs controls one of the biggest proxy pools with 100 million monthly IPs. It covers all countries and most cities in the world, and you can even target them by ASN or ZIP code. The proxies have class-leading performance, are stable and highly scalable. You’ll be getting flexible rotation options, easy-to-use dashboard for proxy management, a dedicated account manager and tips to improve your scraping success.
Oxylabs may not be the best option for beginners or individual use, and it’s expensive compared to some other options.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 100 million monthly IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S), SOCKS5
- Locations: every country, thousands of cities, ASN and ZIP code targeting
- Rotation: every request, sticky sessions up to 30 mins
- Support: 24/7 via live chat, dedicated account manager
- Extras: API, browser extension, extensive documentation
Performance:
- Factual pool size: very large
- Success rate: 99.61%
- Response time: 0.57 s
Pricing:
Starts from $15 for 1 GB. 7-day free trial for businesses, 3-day refund for individuals.
Bright Data is the largest proxy provider in the market, with a huge pool of rotating residential IPs around the world. The proxies have many features and even allow targeting by ASN and ZIP code. We’ve found their performance to be great when the provider didn’t impose artificial limits. Bright Data includes powerful proxy control tools, especially its open source proxy manager. You can subscribe to a pricing plan or pay as you go.
Like Oxylabs, Bright Data is mostly concerned with business customers. We wouldn’t recommend it for beginners – the service can be complex to use, and the pricing structure is somewhat confusing. There’s also a strict KYC process which rules out some grey hat use cases.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 72 million monthly IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S), SOCKS5
- Locations: every country & city, ASN and ZIP code targeting
- Rotation: every request with customizable sticky sessions
- Support: 24/7 via live chat, tickets, dedicated account manager
- Extras: API, browser extension, Proxy Manager, extensive documentation
Performance:
- Factual pool size: very large
- Success rate: 99.17%
- Response time: 1.02 s
Pricing:
Starts from $10.50 for 1 GB. 7-day free trial for businesses, 3-day refund for individuals.
SOAX controls a network of around 5 million residential proxies. It stands somewhere in the middle between cheap and premium providers, similarly to Smartproxy. SOAX’s two distinguishing features are rotation and location targeting. Both are very flexible: you can choose to rotate between IPs with every connection request, specify a custom duration, or keep the same IP until it becomes unavailable. Targeting-wise, SOAX lets you specify not only country, but also region, city, and ASN without paying extra.
Some technical choices raise questions: HTTP(S) traffic over SOCKS5, obligatory IP whitelisting, and limited ports for plans. All in all, choose this provider for the flexibility, if you need it.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 5 million monthly IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S) over SOCKS5
- Locations: 150+ with country, city, ASN targeting
- Rotation: from 90s to 600s (with custom options)
- Support: 24/7 via live chat and tickets
- Extras: limited API, node access (connect to an IP directly), customer success manager
Performance:
- Factual pool size: medium
- Success rate: 99.03%
- Response time: 1.05 s
Pricing:
From $99 for 15GB ($6.60/GB) and 300 ports. 3-day trial for $1.99 available.
Infatica is a business-oriented provider. It controls a network of 10 million peer-to-peer residential IPs, and you can target around 150 countries worldwide. City and ASN targeting are available on request. There’s no limit on the number of threads you can run, and you’ll get flexible rotation options – with every request, or between 5 and 60 minutes.
We experienced more connection errors compared to the top options, but Infatica’s IPs cost less at scale. However, you won’t be able to pay as you go.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 10 million monthly IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S), SOCKS5
- Locations: 150+ locations with country, city, region and ASN targeting
- Rotation: every request, or between 5 and 60 minutes
- Support: 24/7 support via tickets, chat or email
- Extras: extensive documentation
Performance:
- Factual pool size: large
- Success rate: 95.95%
- Response time: 1.2 s
Pricing:
Starts from $96 for 8 GB ($12/GB). 3-day trial for $1.99 available.
Read the Infatica review for more information and performance tests.
Rayobyte is well known for its datacenter proxies, but the provider also sells performant residential addresses. The service covers over 150 countries, which you can filter up to the city level. The provider uses a pricing system where you buy the amount of traffic you need, and it stays there until you use it. Its plans scale very well once you buy 50 GBs and more.
However, Rayobyte doesn’t support the SOCKS5 protocol, and proxies are quite slow. Also, it has inflexible rotation settings. The IPs rotate with every connection request and you can keep them for as long as available; there’s no way to select custom intervals.
Features:
- Proxy pool: unknown
- Protocols: HTTP(S)
- Locations: 150+ with country & city targeting
- Rotation: every request, as long as available
- Support: 24/7 support via email, ticketing system, or live chat
- Extras: extensive documentation
Performance:
- Factual pool size: large
- Success rate: 98.34%
- Response time: 2.3 s
Pricing:
Starts from $15 for 1 GB. 2-day free trial with 50 MB.
With IPRoyal’s service you’ll pay less compared to other providers, and the proxies never expire. The pricing is several times more expensive at fewer GBs, but it scales well, reaching $3.15/GB at one terabyte of data. The service comes with flexible filtering and rotation options, good customer service, and access to the SOCKS5 protocol. The proxies aren’t the best performers, but they’ll work with less demanding tasks.
IPRoyal’s main flaw is the size of its proxy pool. While not exactly tiny, it’s still significantly smaller compared to other providers on this list. What’s more, the low price and ability to resell the proxies further impacts IP reputation. So, it’s definitely not the best option for large-scale use or when you need quality addresses.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 2 million
- Protocols: HTTP(S), SOCKS5
- Locations: 150+ with country, state & city targeting
- Rotation: every request, 1 s – 7 days
- Support: 24/7 via live chat
- Extras: proxy tester, extensive documentation, browser extension
Performance:
- Factual pool size: small
- Success rate: 89.56%
- Response time: 3.73 s
Pricing:
Starts from $7 for 1 GB. No free trial.
Read the IPRoyal review for more information and performance tests.
NetNut controls a respectable pool of rotating residential proxies from around the globe. They’re not heavy on features but cover all the essentials well. NetNut works best for medium and large businesses: paying more unlocks features like dedicated support, IP whitelisting, and request-based pricing. You’ll also find very detailed statistics that let you dive deep into your proxy usage patterns.
It’s worth highlighting that NetNut gives ISP proxies instead of residential when you target America. That said, NetNut isn’t the easiest provider to use, and despite working well, its proxy infrastructure still encounters more errors than the top services.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 52 million
- Protocols: HTTP(S), SOCKS5
- Locations: 150+ countries with country and city targeting
- Rotation: every request or as long as the IP is available
- Support: 24/7 via email, live chat, Skype (larger plans)
- Extras: API (for resellers), basic documentation
Performance:
- Factual pool size: large
- Success rate: 93.52%
- Response time: 2.13 s
Pricing:
Starts from $100 for 5 GBs ($20/GB) . 7-day free trial for companies.
Webshare is a newcomer in the industry, and its residential proxies are the latest addition to the service. It comes with a pool of 30 million monthly IPs that you can filter by 195 individual locations. The provider has two killer features – absolute self-service and customizability. You can separately choose the bandwidth limit, or add network priority for a more stable network (the feature prioritizes your over other requests). In terms of rotation frequency, your proxies will rotate with every request.
Overall, Webshare is one of the cheaper residential proxy providers. However, the service has limited targeting options and no custom rotation.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 30 million
- Protocols: HTTP(S), SOCKS5
- Locations: 195 with country targeting
- Rotation: every request
- Support: Monday to Friday (6am-6pm PST) support via email
- Extras: API, basic documentation
Performance:
- Factual pool size: large
- Success rate: 98.64%
- Response time: 2.08 s
Pricing:
Starts from $7 for 1 GB . No free trial for residential proxies.
PacketStream has affordable residential proxies. It buys bandwidth directly from people and then resells it to customers. This lets PacketStream offer IPs for as little as $1/GB with pay-as-you-go pricing. The performance has been gradually improving every year.
The service has somewhat fallen behind. It still lacks industry-standard features like city-level targeting or SOCKS5 support. Furthermore, we found the provider’s proxy pool to be small (under 6,000 US IPs), which raises a red flag. And for some reason, the provider overcounted our traffic use by eight to ten times. So while it remains a cheap option for residential IPs, we can’t recommend PacketStream for any serious task.
Features:
- Proxy pool: 7 million monthly IPs
- Protocols: HTTP(S)
- Locations: 150+ with country targeting
- Rotation: every request, sticky sessions for as long as available
- Support: 24/7 via email
- Extras: API for resellers
Performance:
- Factual pool size: very small
- Success rate: 97.77%
- Response time: 1.15 s
Pricing:
Starts from $1 for 1 GB. No free trial.
How long does usually residential proxy last, before the IP changes?
It depends on the proxy provider and the end user. Usually, it’s up to 10 or 30 minutes.
Would you recommend to buy a residential proxy for surveys? They’re more expensive than datacenter proxies, but some reviews say that they are better.
Offerman, residential proxies should be a better choice. They hide the fact that you’re using a proxy much better than datacenter IPs. And I’d guess some survey sites are pretty touchy about this subject.
Let’s say I buy a bunch of proxies from a less known provider. How to tell if proxy is residential based? What can be the main way to spot them from data center based proxies?
You can use any IP checker – look for the “ISP” field. If you can’t recognize the company, Google it and see if it’s a commercial provider or one that sells cloud services. Or you can use an IP database like IP2Location. We write more about testing proxies here: https://proxyway.com/guides/how-to-test-proxies
You should try review https://speedproxies.net/ as I tried them for the last few weeks and worked quite good, with the downside being that they don’t support socks5.
Hi Rhys, thanks for the suggestion. We’ll have a look at them.
That’s a very great and detailed overview! From my personal experience, I see Smartproxy as the best solution when choosing residential proxies, especially for SEO tasks since they have those specific Search Engine proxies (https://smartproxy.com/proxies/search-engine-proxies).
Also, there is a great ratio between the price and what you get for it (lots of features), so probably it’s no surprise that this provider is ranked the highest on this list.
For me Smartproxy have the fastest residential proxies I’ve tried. Pretty impressive work with bots. I’m not a pro in copping sneakers and I’ve only tried the whole procedure for personal usage, but I was satisfied.
Good choose, fast delivery time, average prices. All this words about this service. I am a customer of this service 1.5 years, like it
didn’t expect smartproxy to have the fastest residential proxies since their prices are pretty low. is the speed impacted more by the IP / country or the proxy provider?
It’s impacted by many factors: the IP source’s connection speed and location, as well as the location of the provider’s load balancing server and the target website.
can you use residential proxies anywhere? and i mean anywhere, like China or even North Korea? no intentions to do any business there, i’m just curious to see how ultra restricted internet feels like
China yes (though not all providers can offer that), not sure about North Korea. Others places – sure.
do you know more providers for Residential proxies with unlimited bandwidth???
Hi artaville. There’s also Shifter, RSocks, or Geonode. All three offer unlimited-bandwidth plans. Shifter is pretty expensive but has better quality than RSocks. We haven’t tried Geonode yet.
I do warn you from using ip royal proxies, as it leaks, and the provide ips from data centres claiming it is residential.